How to change ESXi management port for vSphere client

[KemikalElite]

I have ESXi 6.0.0 running on my home server and I am trying to configure external access to the management network for the vSphere client software.

My issue is port 443 is currently in use by another service and I cannot configure the other service to use another port.

My options are to either change the ESXi 443 listening port to something other than the default or setup a VPN if i absolutely must.

I checked the KB documentation for changing the vSphere ports at the link below.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1021199

However the article does not have the current instructions for ESXi 6.0.

I have already attempted to change the ports in the rhttpproxy config.xml. although this doesn't seem to change the listening port.

[JarryG]

Just out of curiosity: how can you have port 443 used by "another service" on ESXi? I think this is hardly possible...

[KemikalElite]

It's not an ESXi/VMware service.

The ISP (AT&T) uses ports including 443 for services such as IPTV or VoIP. There is no way to change this so it forces customers to either use an alternate port or purchase an additional IP address.

If I can't configure an alternate port the next best option would be to setup an OpenVPN Access Server or something similar. However setting up a VPN might cause connection issues on slower networks so I'm trying to avoid that method if possible.

[JarryG]

But if it is not ESXi-service, then there is no port-conflict on ESXi-host. Why do you want to change port then? Now this is only my guess because you did not provide enough info about your network configuration:

You are probably running some kind of router with public-IP, and you want to have management-port of your ESXi-host directly accessible from the "outside" (which btw is very bad idea and I strongly discourage you from doing it that way). And port 443 on your router's public IP is taken by that IPTV/VoIP-services. Am I right?

*IF* it is so, then I do not see here any problem at all. Depending on your router/gateway just set up proper port/ip-forwarding (sometimes called "virtual server"), i.e. any connection to public IP of your router and port (let's say) 9000 will be translated/forwarded to local IP (of private address space) of your ESXi-host and its port 443. This is technically no problem, and any router can do it. It means, you would use alternate port on your router/gateway, but you need not to use alternate port on ESXi-host.

[KemikalElite]

You are exactly correct.

However the issue is that the router/gateway returns an error when I try to forward the ESXi server to port 443 is already forwarded to the IPTV device. That setting is hardcoded by the ISP and cannot be changed.

I will most likely just setup a VPN but that would mean that if the VPN would stop responding for any reason I'd lose access to the ESXi management.

I suppose that's still better than not being able to access it at all or exposing it to the Internet.